Home for the holidays...
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Next, I made two wreaths for my front door. I love them, but James complains that everytime he opens the door is snows glitter. I told him it is an added feature, sort of like those grocery store brooms that smell like cinnamon. That is a bad example though, because I hate those brooms. Their scent is so overwhelming I feel gorged like those poor little geese in France.
Last Thursday, I went in for arthroscopic surgery with the expectation of being up and walking in a few days. Unfortunately, there were a few surprises lurking in and around my knee cap so I am on strict orders not to put weight on my left knee for 6 weeks. I have crutches, but they sent a wheelchair once I explained my propensity to walk into walls and trip over air. After a few near misses accompanied by yelps, I told John not to worry if I scream unless he hears a subsequent crash.
Yesterday, I tried putting lights on our tree, lurching through pine needles and groping to find a plug, while at the same time clinging to the sliding glass door. After haphazardly flinging the last length of pink LED lights, I broke into an exhausted sweat, plopped down in my wheelchair, and rolled away not noticing half the lights exiting with me, the cord having snagged on the brake of the wheelchair. I hopped to the garage refrigerator to grab a couple of sodas, then careened back into the wheelchair. That is about all I got accomplished yesterday: lit half of our tree and shook up some soda cans, but at least I managed not to injure myself or anyone nearby.
Zuzu is completely baffled by the wheelchair as is Charlotte. Charlotte is an Australian Shepherd, ever on hand in case there is a job that needs to be done. She doesn't know what that job is or how to do it, but she is ready. Thus far she has been 100 % successful at keeping the wolves away. Zuzu, on the other hand, is a big baby and tries to climb in my lap, sending me wheeling backwards until I hit a wall. Chloe, the terrier, is non-plused about the whole business. I suspect she would like to perch a the pillow in the wheelchair and have me wheel her around.
Once I am a bit more on the mend I want to work at my jeweler's bench. My latest designs are moving in a fun direction and I am excited to play with some new ideas. I am juxtaposing (as I am wont to do) blingy swarovski crystal chain next to gun-metal links and pyrite. Danielle and I are going to design her bridesmaids earrings using faceted hexagonal crystals I ordered from China.
All of our children will be here for Christmas, Danielle from Baltimore and Heather coming in from Massachusetts. I am really looking forward to the chorus of laughter that only happens when everyone is home. It's like a good wine, with notes and layers to it that create a delicious whole. And with regard to the glitter shake down with all the comings and goings at the front door, I say: "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."
Happy Thanksgiving! I'm thankful for you...
I can't believe Walgreen's has photobooks you can make and pick up the same day. I made one for Harriett Lake as a thank-you and will mail it to her today. (I couldn't resist buying one for myself too.) It felt really good to get the pictures organized and document the tree's story line. Here is a link to my book if you want to take a peek-a-loo. I'm really happy with how it turned out.
It was post-festival boxing day at the museum with everyone taking down their decorations. I retrieved my display materials and I let out a huge sigh of relief that I didn't have to dismantle the tree. If it hadn't sold I would have had to remove every last plastic bottle from the 12 ft tree returning it undamaged. 
James got us hooked on this new show called "Quirky" about a company by that name that takes inventions to market. Their web-site allows the public to vote on people's ideas, then one or two get chosen each week to be developed. I WANT THIS MOP! Why can't there be a mop with a loop of fabric like the old fashioned hand-towel dispensers in restrooms? You can vote for my idea at Quirky's web-site. You might enjoy surfing the crazy inventions people submit. Mine, however, is beyond sane. It is brilliant! (That is a powdered-sugar canister posing as a mop by the way.)
Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I have so much to be thankful for. When I finished up my silly photo book, I read it aloud to John and James in case I missed mistakes or it didn't make sense in some way. To my surprise, I got choked up, and blubbered "I just can't believe I did this." And I didn't do it alone. I did it in community with all of you who keep me motivated, who eagerly offer your help or welcome my requests, who pray for me and email me that my voice matters in the universe. I have a husband of 32 ( or is it 33?) years and I know it hasn't been easy. John considered starting a support group for "husbands with wacky wives" once, but he only has one friend with a wife as nutty as I am. I adore my four stellar children, my parents are still living and involved in our lives, I have a network of friends and family I can count on (and who collect innumerable bottles for me), and I get to do the work I love. If you are reading this, you are on my thank-you list. Happy Thanksgiving!
(Wreath I made for mom and dad)
Hugging the tree good-bye... Now what am I going to do?
Last night we went to 'The Holiday Romp' at the museum, one last hurrah for me before the festival ends. I had John took a picture of my traditional 'tree hugger farewell.' Here are the trees starting from 2008. Somehow I missed hugging last year's tree good-bye.
Flat Gabe, fat dog, and losing balance...
I am told our tree is the talk of the museum galleries. Thursday, the ESE students at Edgewater High School are meeting me there to see and have their picture taken with the tree they helped create. What they don't know is that our tree is sporting a big fat blue ribbon for Best of Show! What's more, Philanthropist Harriett Lake purchased the tree and donated it to the Orlando Museum of Art where it will be on display throughout the holidays. The museum curator called today and plans for our tree to share space with the giant Dale Chihuly tower in the front gallery. (Does this mean I have a piece in a museum collection? I am going to go with a 'yes' and not ask any questions.) To top it all off, my two oldest children, Heather and Danielle, will be home for Christmas and I can show it off to them.
It is really difficult to get a good photograph of our tree partly because of the sparkle, partly because it's so tall, and partly because I am not a very good photographer. Here is a shot of it next to the ladder I almost fell off of. It is the same ladder Gabe is standing on, though he did not have the trouble I did negotiating his descent.
Now that the tree and street painting festival are over, I am trying to switch gears to making jewelry, having fun playing with some new materials I picked up a few months back. Off balance yet balanced was the theme today, a reflection of my state of mind? I incorporated pieces of Swarovski crystal chain into one side of two necklaces. Symmetry would have been much easier, but I think they were worth the angst I had to pass through until they felt 'just right.'
This one has a raw diamond chunk in it. I like the black industrial looking chain juxtaposed with the sparkly dichroic glass and crystals.
I made another batch of artisan bread for dinner. We go through it fast since Zuzu (dalmatian a.k.a. damnation) is a master thief. John caught her jumping the counter and flinging the cooling rack, sending the bread flying into her ready jaws. I have resorted to using the microwave as a breadbox.
I am scheming on a project for United Cerebral Palsy. It might have to wait until the New Year, but I am hoping to work with the K-3rd grade students on an installation for their lobby. Ciao! (We're having Italian eggplant casserole for dinner.)
Lucky pants, two kinds of illumination, and perspective...
Well it's D day, the last day to finish the tree so I am wearing my lucky pants: mustard yellow corduroys. I made good progress yesterday, though the lights continue to short out, as do I. As a teacher, I came to realize that the things that made some students stand out, their less than appealing traits, are the flip side of their gifts. This project illuminated (no pun intended, you'll see) something about the yin and the yang of my personality.The foresight that enables me to picture a completed project has a dark 'worst case scenario' side. So, when the tree lights shorted out the first time, I dissolved into a puddle of doom convinced that I would never be able to finish the tree and that somehow my very life was at risk. Ah, perspective. What an allusive yet invaluable coping mechanism.
I read Dave Egger's What is the What recently, and went on to watch the documentary God Grew Tired of Us about the crisis which continues in the Sudan. My friends the Masons adopted a group of five Sudanese children. I got to meet the youngest, Leek, who came to the U.S. when he was twelve and has just finished completing his Master's Degree at The London School of Economics. If you ever want a healthy dose of perspective I highly recommend both the book and the movie.
So, I'm off to finsh my joyous project. My new friend Ailene, who teaches the wonderful ESE kids at Edgewater High School, is coming to my rescue. Her husband John is a lighting specialist and is going to stop by the museum today to solve the lighting problem. I wish he could solve the tree skirt situation as well. At the moment it looks like a child's egg carton project gone wrong. I stuck a Michael's coupon in my purse in case I need to chuck it and start over.
I am arranging the colors similarly to my installation in Michigan and it is working well. The colors move from one to the next, swirling up the tree and finishing in an explosion of white and silver. I like to think it's reminiscent of the old fashioned aluminum trees with the color changing wheely light. So far the tree is a hit with the volunteers and designers working to get everything ready for opening day. Here is a link to the Festival of Trees schedule. I hope you get a chance to come see my biggest tree EVER (but don't look too closely at the skirt.)
Jack-o-lanterns, pink poodles, and Ricky Ricardo...
My adventure to Lake Orienta went well. It was rainy so we ditched the 80 kids at the picnic tables idea and taught a much more manageable classroom of about 20 lovely fifth graders.
Yesterday I sorted out my bottles, not counting the truckload that is still in my car. I think I'll be in good shape for the tree, but realized we were light on red and purple. I say 'were' because I went to visit my friends at Edgewater High School who have been cutting water bottles for me for a week. One of the helpers strung them on a piece of yarn and they looked so pretty. It reminded me of Oren showing me how the children in Haiti hang strings of flowers in their classrooms. They worked tirelessly for an hour and a half, cranked out an amazing quantity and array of purple and red blossoms as well as cut a big old bag full of painted bottles I had left from another school. 
There is a predominance of pink in my collection, but I think that will fit in nicely with the 50's theme of the festival this year. I keep thinking of these crazy poodles at the American Visionary Art Museum where our Danielle is getting married. I decided to paint the tree skirt to match and it's almost finished. Tomorrow and Wednesday I'm off to meet with a home school group and then I leave for the International Street Painters Festival in Sarasota. My friend Susan and I are going to attempt a Chuck Close painting. My kids have done two of his pieces at chalk festivals and have about gone cross-eyed, but the images turned out really cool and are different from what you usually see at street painting festivals. I couldn't find the painting we are going to do on-line, but I did find a CBS Sunday morning segment that references Close and last year's ArtPrize where an artist made incredible portraits using primary colored pushpins. I also found
I'll close with this picture of the 50s-ish sequins I am using to channel my inner Lucille Ball. "RICKYYYYYYY!"
"Random thoughts, epiphanies,and other leaps of faith..."
That has been my working book title since 1996, but it seems to describe my current state of mind. Today, I go to Lake Orienta Elementary where 80 fifth grade students gather for a bottle cutting/ painting/ glittering event. Splash mob? In preparation I am wearing my lucky mustard yellow pants that are beginning to feature splotches of paint. Seriously, I am working myself up into a frenzy about this, excited and scared to death at the same time. I told Lake Orienta's art teacher that I am forever running to a terrifying precipice to see if I can make the leap across to the other side. I feel that way about my Festival of Trees entry as well, so I am glad that the new trend instead of 'planking' is 'tebowing.' According to the official site: (vb) to get down on a knee and start praying, even if everyone else around you is doing something completely different. I am planning a photo op (or several) of me catching this trend today. (I think I might add a new internet trend of making the sign of the cross, or maybe breathing into a paper bag?)
"The first thing you learn in skating is how to get up. You know you are going to fall, and when you fall you are just going to get up, right?" Scott Hamilton,who is recovering from a brain tumor, is talking to children skating in Central Park this morning. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: " I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile I keep dancing."(Daniel Hillel) One of my biggest fears, right next to heights and involuntarily making a scene (like running out of a restaurant screaming, for example), is that I will let people down. I will fret all day that I have the time of our 'splash mob' wrong or will be late getting to the school which is a block from my house. Believe it or not, I set my alarm last night so I wouldn't oversleep. I am due at the school after lunch. I rarely sleep past 8:15.
I do have ADD, but not the energetic H component. My brilliant friend Oren Mason, who wrote a book on ADD/ADHD from the perspective of a doctor who has the condition and whose practice is devoted to it, says that people with ADD fuel themselves with anxiety in order to complete tasks. We do things like wait until the last minute, develop obsessive compulsive fears, or take on more than we can handle as a coping mechanisms to kick start the energy we need to focus. I think he is brilliant.
Speaking of the Masons, they introduced me to this fabulous recipe for making artisan bread in five minutes a day. I tried it and it works! The bread come out chewy and delicious. I overcooked mine a little, thus the too dark top. (I considered photoshopping it out, then you would never know.)
This week I worked with grades K-5 at Altamonte Christian School, then Natalie's classmates (class of 2012!) spent their study hall assembling the pieces, stacking them in threes, gluing, and inserting the floral pick so my installation next week at the museum will be a seamless as possible. My car is approaching the condition it was in when we left for the ArtPrize installation. (I think Oren is right. I really am the Johnny Appleseed of glitter.)
In the past, I have assembled the trees ahead of time, including one year when we built it like a ship in a bottle and couldn't get it out the door. This year, I am putting it together on-site, adding to my anxiety. I won't know for certain how it is going to look until I get there on Monday, Novemeber 7th and start the process. The up side is that I have 3 days to finish it and if worse comes to worst, Tuesday is recycling-day nearby, leaving me 24 hours until the deadline. Better go tebow.
Crankiness, gorgeous weather, and my zombie screenplay...
Zuzu breakfast, part II "Chloe goes first."
I've been super cranky the last few days. It it must be all the gorgeous weather coupled with my lack of a good 'excitement control valve'. Having imagined being a special needs teacher since I was in the third grade,so working with the kids at Edgewater was a dream come true. After two dreamy overly excited days, I crashed, and was slogging around like a zombie looking for a victim.
Speaking of zombies, I have the best storyline for a zombie movie: A 'greedy corporation' comes up with an agricultural formula for food that has no calories. People are wild for it, (no zombies yet, just people greedy for the skinny.) The more people eat, the thinner they become. After a honeymoon period of universal elegance, there being 'no such thing as too thin,' the corporation's plants cross pollinate with the nation's food supply and leave it with no nutritional value. Eventually, people start needing to fuel their bodies and you know the rest.
Which brings me back to yesterday's dark mood. I tried to shake it by working in my glass studio. I tried sitting in the sun, meditating, even reading a book on love. (I am enjoying Love Wins by Rob Bell.) I decided to make myself get out of the house and run errands. As I sat at a stop light grumbling that I don't want to be living in the city, too much traffic, blah blah blah, cuss cuss cuss my light turned green. I slowly entered the intersection and wiz BANG! a woman ran a red light, smashed into my front bumper, then swerved onto the median. I sat at the intersection so long, stunned and frozen and not knowing what to do, that the man behind me came to make sure I was OK. I was fine, just jittery. I pulled the car back into the parking lot and awaited the traffic police. Meanwhile, the woman who hit me left the scene in her left white 91 chevy with a dented right front bumper. (Maybe she fled because my eyes turned lime green, I was drooling, and she thought I was going to eat her. Tell it to the judge, sweetheart.) Thank you Guy in the Bright Red Pick-up, for bringing me her license plate number. And to think I was cursing big trucks as I was squeezing out of my car in a tight parking space earlier in the day.
ColdPlay is on the Today's show making me want to buy some low-tops and hop, skip, and spin around a stage. I love the sense of play they emanate. It reminds me of my 10-year-old Danielle, dressed in her terrycloth bathrobe, dancing in the rain. I will close on a very bright note: a couple more pictures I received from my friends at Edgewater.
Late for a very important date and Zuzu the smiling dog...
I was hoping Zuzu would do her breakfast dance for you, which involves leaping up from the floor, banking all fours on the bed to lunge out the door where she spins on the carpet in the foyer and jumps around until I pour kibble in her bowl. Instead, she felt compelled to smile for the camera, and sneeze. Her predecessor 'Checkers' used to speak sneeze. He would sneeze, then I would make a sneezy noise back, then he would sneeze longer. This interchange would continue until both of us were shaking our heads and 'chooing' through drooling jowls.
I overslept today. (Note to self: When changing the alarm clock feature on your telephone, always hit 'save.' ) Part of the reason Zuzu didn't do her full breakfast dance is that I had to rush out the door and didn't feed her until I got home. She was confused as to whether to do the 'breakfast dance' or the 'yay!! you're hoooooome!!' dance. Between that and the video camera going I completely threw off her timing.
If you come to our house, she and Charlotte, and occasionally Chloe, will wrestle for you (if not with you, or on you. ) Sit in our living room and they wrestle on the rug in the foyer. Rest your behind in our family room and they wrestle on the carpet i call "World Wrestling Federation." The rink is nestled in the middle of our sectional couch, providing ample front row seating for their performance where the dogs can enjoy your undivided attention. Refreshments are often served, but then their attention gets divided.
This morning, unfortunately, I could not give the poor puppies any attention, divided or not. I rushed out the door with no make-up on and crazy hair. I then proceeded to get lost on my way to the school causing me greater distress and whispered expletives. I kept envisioning the students dolefully looking at the clock and sighing "I bet she's not going to come." To my surprise they had already made a huge new batch of bottles! I can't get over how this project brings so much joy. Other teachers stopped in oooing and ahhhhhing. The students took my need to make 1,000 ornaments to heart and gave me the head start I needed. The pieces they made are fabulous! Thank you Mrs. Markam's class and all the helpers that pitched in to make the project work (and dealt with the glitter/paint aftermath of my visit.)
Voila! Some of our finished ornaments.
Proud Parents: Our recycled tree sells immediately!
We couldn't be more proud! Our Red Hot and Recycled Tree was the 2nd tree to sell in the presale event today. It fetched full price, a handsome $1800 to benefit the art museum and sold to the dismay of other admirers. Here we are having almost lost our minds on delivery day...
Sentinel Publishes Step-by-step photos...
Meanwhile my jewelry is being worn by international models at a Peter's Island photo shoot! I wonder if sunsets there are as pink as the one out of my window right now. It makes me want to make my 'sky glass' series again.
Recycled Bottle Tree 2010: Red Hot and Recycled
We delivered the tree today. We were on Channel 6 news. Click if you would like to know how to make the ornaments! Here's the tree skirt made of recycled plastic shopping bags with centers our Preschool students made out of bottle caps.
Saving up Sharpies, autographs anyone?
Jean Patteson came out last week to write a piece for the Orlando Sentinel about our glorious tree. I have known Jean since my days of hand-painting clothing over twenty years ago. She is such a lovely person and always enthusiastic about our goings-on.
Courtney Cachet's NBC piece featuring one of our arrangements is scheduled to air November 28th and yesterday Orlando Arts Magazine published a full page featuring our tree and a how-to so that we can keep the holidays glitterful and the landfills a few bottles less full. And today Channel 6 came out and spent an hour chatting with me and with our students getting the low-down on how we spin gold out of straw... I mean glass out of plastic. Here is the Orlando Arts article for anyone that would like to try their hand at it:
Glitter-copia in Sparkle-topia
The photo to the right is an image of my world until the Festival of Trees. Between doing the tree with my students and creating the ornaments, bottle stoppers, and arrangements for the boutique I even dream in glitter. Inspired by a project I saw on-lines my students and I painted our still life with glue and presto! Gourd-geous don't you think?
The Orlando Sentinel comes tomorrow to see our tree and learn how we do what we do. We are scheduled to do a how-to segment with Channel 6 news next week so that everyone can enjoy making ornaments. Our trail of sparkles may lead right up to your door. Boo!